The famous last mile problem has been the greatest unsolved problem in telecommunication since the days of Thomas Alva Edison and Alexander Bell. This problem, of course, reads as follows: more than 90% of all people are within a mile from an access point to the global telecommunication network. However, more than 99% of the cost is spent accessing that last mile, i.e. digging up roads and laying wires and optical fibres to households and base stations to transfer data and deliver power to them.
Even further, when one operator has put up the capital to reach that last mile to the customer, it becomes practically impossible for new competing operators to start competing by building another access solution to the customer. The original operator can always price its service temporarily so, that it is uneconomical to the competing operator to incur the capital outlay cost of a competing last mile connection in a situation that might lead to price competition, but still the capital outlay cost that the original operator invested is producing a hefty return on investment. Needless to say, several competition laws and government watchdogs have been implemented to steer this monopolistic market dynamic to more free competition.
In the prior art it is known that solar cells have been used to power light houses, for example on the Baltic Sea.
In the prior art it is also known that free space optics connections can be used to replace optical fibre connections, by shooting a laser beam from one building to another.
In the prior art it is also known that free space optics connections have been realised in space from scientific satellites that have been powered by solar panels.
WO2006/044519 discusses radio-to-fibre conversion and mentions solar cell powered picocells.
The prior art techniques are incapable of solving the last mile problem.